Chapter 6 - The Broken Crown
Standing on the other side of the wrought-iron security gate was Victoria Ashford.
She looked unrecognizable. The immaculate, ice-queen socialite who had dominated Chicago high society for thirty years was gone. Her hair was unstyled, her clothes were unpressed, and she was carrying a large cardboard box filled with framed family photographs.
I pressed the gate intercom button, but I didn't open the latch.
"Victoria," I said through the speaker. "Why are you here?"
Victoria pressed her face against the iron bars, her eyes wide and bloodshot. "Emma! Please! You have to talk to the federal prosecutors! They set Charles’s bail at two million dollars! We don't have that kind of money! They’ve frozen all our personal accounts!"
"I know," I said calmly. "The IRS freezes accounts tied to active wire fraud investigations. That’s standard protocol."
"You have the money!" Victoria wept, her voice high and desperate. "Use the Trust! Take out a loan against the house! He’s your father, Emma! He’s sixty-two years old—he can't survive in a federal holding facility!"
I looked at her through the black iron bars, feeling a profound, quiet sadness—not for Charles, but for the realization of how utterly hollow my mother’s love had always been.
"When I was twenty-two," I said softly, my voice carrying clearly through the crisp air, "I graduated top of my class from business school. Neither you nor Dad came to my graduation because Lily had a equestrian competition in Virginia."
Victoria blinked, stunned by the sudden memory. "What... what does that have to do with anything?!"
"When I was twenty-eight," I continued, "I was hospitalized with severe pneumonia for two weeks. You visited me once for ten minutes, because you were on your way to a charity gala and didn't want your dress to get wrinkled in the hospital chair."
Tears streamed down Victoria’s unwashed face. "Emma, please... I made mistakes! I was a terrible mother! I admit it! Is that what you want to hear?!"
"And on my thirty-fifth birthday," I finished, my voice steady as iron, "you hosted a party for Lily, invited two hundred people to my home, and posted to the entire world that she was the only child worth remembering."
"I was angry at you!" Victoria shrieked, clutching the iron bars. "You were always so distant! So cold! You were so hard to love!"
"I wasn't hard to love, Victoria," I said, stepping closer to the gate. "I was just hard to control. Because I saw through your lies. And now, the lies are over."
"Please..." Victoria sobbed, dropping to her knees on the gravel driveway outside the gate. "What am I supposed to do? I have nothing left!"
"You have the guest cottage," I said. "And if you wish to remain there, you will live quietly, without causing public drama. Lily and I have set up a small weekly allowance for your groceries and basic necessities, drawn from Lily’s legal salary and my personal income. You will not receive a penny from the Trust."
Victoria looked up at me from the ground, her hands trembling. "You're... you're giving me an allowance? Like a child?"
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"No," I replied, turning my back on her. "Like a tenant."
I walked back up the stone steps toward the main house without looking back.
